It is often difficult for a physician to determine the type of microbe causing an ocular disease or infection (e.g., conjunctivitis). Most physicians who diagnosis ocular diseases or infections (e.g., infectious conjunctivitis or corneal diseases) do not have easy access to a hospital microbiology facility to accurately diagnosis the disease. Additionally, microbiology laboratories often are not skilled in the nuances associated with identifying infections from ocular specimens. For these reasons, most conjunctivitis is not routinely cultured and is presumed to be bacterial, and is treated as bacterial infections such as with ophthalmic antibiotic solutions. However, antibiotics do not have activity against other causes of conjunctivitis including, for example, viruses and acanthamoeba, which may be misdiagnosed or undiagnosed.
There is currently a need for an ophthalmic composition for the treatment of ocular diseases or infections of at least one tissue of the eye (e.g., conjunctiva or cornea) that can potentially arise from a variety of different origins (e.g., bacterial, fungal, or viral). There is also a need for antimicrobial/anti-inflammatory combinations useful for viral, fungal, mycobacterial and amoebic infections in the post-operative period.